A MCMC-type simple probabilistic approach for determining optimal progressive censoring schemes

We present here a simple probabilistic approach for determining an optimal progressive censoring scheme by defining a probability structure on the set of feasible solutions. Given an initial solution, the new updated solution is computed within the probabilistic structure. This approach will be especially useful when the cardinality of the set of feasible solutions is large. The validation of the proposed approach is demonstrated by comparing the optimal scheme so determined with the one obtained by exhaustive numerical search.